Opening weekend last fall during charitable weather for November (upper 50s, little wind), we skinned and quartered deer that hung from a hand-me-down hitch-mounted hoist that Grandpa had welders fashion years ago and have since become common contraptions in deer camps.
We weren’t the first hunters to clean game there as a countless collection of duck, goose and sandhill feathers temporarily stuck to the grass on the north side of the place we were renting for the weekend. The next strong wind out of the northwest, the eventual arrival of which you could hang your hat on with certainty, would wipe the slate clean, sending the waterfowl fluff the color of dirty snow into the next township.
The two deer, a whitetail buck and a mule deer doe, were shot maybe a mile apart. The buck appeared out of nowhere, headed to who knows where, as they often do when the rut is in swing. The doe was bedded in a head-high patch of vegetation no bigger than the bed of my pickup and made the mistake of standing up.
Skinning and quartering the two animals and loading their parts into cloth game bags and a cooler with block ice was comfortable work, the way it should be but so seldom is.
Typically, we’re fighting cold hands that only want to work partway through the job and sheltering in any break we can find from an incessant wind that is as dedicated to hurrying across the landscape as we are to wandering the countryside in November.
The second weekend in the deer season that gives us three, the weather whipped a U-turn. By the number of other hunters we saw in the field, none that I can remember, we missed the memo that we should have stayed home.
An ugly northwest wind that felt like it was going to blow in something unforgiving, rocked my parked pickup as my youngest, hell-bent on going it alone in the hills to fill his doe tag, doublechecked his backpack before heading out.
My job, as it stood, and certainly not terrible duty considering, was to drive around, eat my tuna sandwich and pick him up at an undetermined location in an hour or so when he called.
He never called.
I thought I might hear something when it started to rain.
Nothing.
I expected him to hit me up when the rain turned to a wet, sideways-blowing snow that censored my binoculars-view of the hills he was hunting.
Nothing.
When I finally spotted him through the blowing snow, I was confused, because the tan hunting pants he was wearing looked black. And why was he walking hunched over like a hunter many times his senior?
Then it all made sense.
When I jumped out of the vehicle to give him a hand, I congratulated him and said that was a long way to drag a deer solo.
You could have called, I added.
We skinned and quartered the deer at a buddy’s farm on the lee side of some evergreens, stopping more than once to jump in the pickup to warm hands that just didn’t want to work.
